


even while the dust moves

by dragonlisette



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Comfort, Depression, Established Relationship, Family, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 06:23:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15624585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonlisette/pseuds/dragonlisette
Summary: Nothing bad is supposed to happen when he’s with the Lesters. (Or, the day after Phil's birthday brings darkness, and Kath makes tea. Set 2019.)





	even while the dust moves

**Author's Note:**

> love is itself unmoving,  
> only the cause and the end of movement,  
> timeless, and undesiring  
> except in the aspect of time  
> caught in the form of limitation  
> between un-being and being.  
> sudden in a shaft of sunlight  
> even while the dust moves
> 
> ts eliot, burnt norton

The ceiling is beige.

Last night, when the two of them had come to bed, tugging pajamas out of their shared bag, giggling through toothpaste, filled with cake and laughter and love, the ceiling had still been beige. Phil had kissed Dan’s ear, glasses off and in the darkness, and Dan had tried to squawk under his breath, push him away and pull him close in the same movement. Sleep had come easy after a long morning in planes and trains, a late evening playing the board games Phil had wanted to play, because you only turn thirty-two once. The ceiling and the walls around him had been warm and friendly, then. Now, though. Now the ceiling is just dull, gray through the filmy half-darkness, and his eyes blink and open again because the darkness behind his eyelids refuses to shift back into sleep.

Phil’s breath is warm against Dan’s bare shoulder, his cold fingers thin lines of pressure where they lay light against his arm. Dan doesn’t turn his head to look, because it would disturb him and because his head is too heavy. His eyes trace the spiderweb cracks in the plaster, the angles of the motionless fan. He isn’t sure of the time. Isn’t sure how long he’s been awake or how long he’s been watching the colors fade. There’s a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, a stinging cocktail of anger and frustration and despair, because when he’s with the Lesters, nothing bad is supposed to happen.

His fingers shift restlessly, and then the rest of him shifts too. Beside him, Phil hums and tightens his grip on Dan’s arm for a moment. Dan stills, even though now the restlessness prickles at him, tells him to pace and move and remind himself that he exists. He can only lie still for a few more seconds before he slides off the bed, stands shivering on the cold floor in the dark, watching Phil’s sleeping form adjust to the loss. He hopes briefly that Phil will wake, squint at him and mumble half a question and somehow magically fix everything, but Phil just shifts and sighs and Dan is left standing alone.

Their phones lie on the dresser next to each other, abandoned in the stir of arrival and mostly forgotten. Dan had tweeted in the airport, a candid of Phil with messy hair plastered in celebratory animated stickers, and after that they’d given themselves the day to enjoy family. He taps his. Five-forty. Not much sleep, then. And a pile of notifications so long that he turns away without so much as picking the phone up.

At the window, an island January clings to the glass, seeping in, coiling around Dan’s bare feet and chest. Behind him, he feels more than he sees that Phil is curling into the warmth of the spot he’s left behind. He feels the chill of hopelessness deep to his core, and he knows any number of cognitive techniques but all he really wants is to pick up the worn hoodie Phil wore on the plane up off the floor and crawl into it, and so he does. The smell of Phil’s shampoo holds onto the fabric like a memory. A memory of the bed he left behind, where Phil’s hair tickles his face and Phil’s scent surrounds him. The fizzle of frustration snaps in his wrists. Nothing bad is supposed to happen when he’s with the Lesters.

Downstairs, it’s dark and drafty. He doesn’t quite remember his trip down, but the buzz in his head and the hum of the refrigerator make an insectlike symphony to the crackle of his nerves. He runs the pads of his fingers over the smooth surface of the fridge, the oven, the countertops. If he were home, he would get a glass and drink water just to have something to do with his body. Here, his stomach tells him he’s an intruder. He stands at the kitchen window and watches the wind rustle the grass in the garden outside.

The footsteps startle him. The time by the microwave is a little past six and there’s the familiar edge of discomfort from inexplicably losing time to his brain. He turns, fight-or-flight zinging in his ears, can he get back to the stairs in time? and Kath is in the doorway with her hand on the light switch, wearing a zip-up jumper over her pajamas, looking nearly as startled as he feels.

“Good morning,” she says, as if she was expecting him, as if finding sons-in-law in her kitchen at six o’clock in the morning is usual. The kitchen floods with white light, and he feels exposed and raw. Maybe she can see it. Maybe she can look at him and see the emptiness crawling at his extremities like maggots, maybe she can see through his eyes and into his skull, and –

He realizes he’s been standing silent and zombie-like by the counter. He laughs a weird, broken laugh that feels entirely separate from his mouth. “Morning.”

When she looks at him, it’s with Phil’s eyes. Softer, maybe, with smiling crows’-feet and a rounder face, but it’s Phil’s eyes. She pads across the kitchen in unmatched socks, slides the kettle from its place, crosses to fill it in the sink. “Six o’clock is too early without some tea, I always say. I have these friends and we walk in the mornings, seven to eight, and it does help get the day started but I’m always quite a sourpuss at first.”

Dan nods dumbly. He feels like a giant next to her, this small woman with the reading glasses danging from a cord around her neck. She clicks the kettle on, and as she turns the light catches the wedding ring on her hand. This is the woman that raised the love of his life. It’s an incongruent thought and he wishes he could think of something natural to say. She’s still talking, and he finds the emotion for a shred of gratitude.

“They always say to me, they say, Kath, if you’re going to make those faces you might as well go back to bed, but I stick it out and I’m awake by seven-thirty.”

Dan nods again. These days, he rarely feels like there’s a better option for Phil, not like he used to. He knows himself and he knows Phil and he knows they fit and work and last. The voice in his head doesn’t bother whispering about that, not anymore. But it hisses at him now, spits shame into him. He’s useless and heavy and unwelcome, and even if he knows he’s good for Phil, how can Kath look at him and see anything more than –

“Phil’s still asleep?” she asks, breaking neatly into the increasingly panicky monologue. She pulls open a drawer for a box of teabags. English breakfast. Unbattered, like it hasn’t been lost at the back of a cupboard for five months.

“Yeah,” he says, and his voice sound so distant. She points him to a chair at the kitchen table and he sits uncomfortably. He thinks she probably knows why he’s acting weird, and it’s vaguely comforting, but it crawls at him that in a glance she could know his darkness. His hands, when he folds them on the table in front of him, don’t feel like his own.

“Always been a sleepyhead,” she says. Her tone is warm but it reveals nothing. “Since there’s two of us down here, we can use the good teapot, don’t you think?” She nods at it, blue porcelain on a high shelf. “Do you mind reaching it down, dear? I’d have to get up on a chair.”

Dan thinks. He knows what his therapist would say. The Naomi that lives in his head and narrates imaginary sessions tells him that accomplishing small tasks will improve his outlook. The buzzing acid voice reminds him that he’s worthless, that everything he touches goes wrong and bad. “I don’t want to drop it,” he says finally. Kath turns back, purses her lips in a friendly way, nods.

“You’re probably right,” she says, and it’s so gentle. “Don’t need to make an occasion out of it, it’s just us.” She takes down thick mugs from the cupboard instead, and Dan sees their merchandise there, the pixel cup floating toward the front like it’s one that sees use. He almost smiles.

Kath sits across from him, tugs a drugstore book of Sudoku puzzles from a rack that Dan thinks is intended to hold napkins. She scribbles away with a thoughtful air until the water boils and she’s sliding a mug of tea in front of Dan. She knows they barely drink tea, but she’s right, he thinks, that six o’clock calls for it. The steam rises to his face, soothes his stinging, tired eyes.

“I’m trying to think of embarrassing stories about Phil to tell you,” she says, mug clasped between her hands. “Trouble is, he never really changed. Just got clumsier the bigger he got, and besides he tells most of the stories himself.”

Dan nods, swallows with difficulty around the lump in his throat.

“Well.” She glances out the window, where glimmers of sunlight are peeking through the trees. “He was always scared of appointments. Frustrating child. Not getting jabs or anything, but the concept of appointments. Haircuts, checkups. Always saying he didn’t want to waste their time. He got so sick once, we were going to take him to A and E, and he says _no, mum, it’s nothing_ like he could recover through force of will.”

Dan clears his throat. “He’s still like that.”

“I bet he is,” she says fondly. She sips her tea slow. “Glad he’s your problem now, eleven and a half months out of the year.”

“Me too,” Dan says. The tea is too hot, but the scald in his throat almost clears his head, almost brings sensation back to the numbness and the buzzing. Be careful, Naomi says in his head, with things that make you feel when you’re numb.

“He’s my boy, though. Family’s family.” She says it with the certitude of someone expressing a moral absolute. She pushes herself up, pours some health cereal into a bowl and adds rice milk and a spoon. Dan is almost stunned by watching someone eat cereal like a normal human being, and then he’s brought back by her sharp blue eyes staring directly into his as she sits again. “You’re family.”

Dan’s eyes sting with tears, suddenly and out of nowhere.

“I’m not sure what’s going on in that curly head, but I know you’re my boy.” She pushes the Sudoku book across the table, follows it with her biro. “Figure out that puzzle for me, will you? I need to eat this quick if I’m going to have time to get dressed before the walking group comes round the corner. I swear, Dan, Marylou keeps trying to push the time earlier, I’m going to have to have a word with her.”

* * *

 When Phil thumps down the stairs yawning at nearly nine, Dan is still sitting at the kitchen table with his bare feet tucked up under him, pushing his brain through puzzles. He thinks that once he gets up, the darkness will prod at him like a needy shadow, but for now, he twists his fingers around the pen and thinks about numbers. The kitchen is bright and washed with winter light and Nigel is watching the global business news in the next room, Kath standing in the doorway, her hair damp from the shower, simultaneously updating him on all the neighborhood interpersonal news and peeking over Dan’s shoulder to check on his progress. Phil slides into the chair next to Dan like a sleepy teenager expecting breakfast to be brought to the table for him.

“How long you’ve been up for?” he asks, mumbly, running his fingers through his hair to push the waves back up his forehead.

“A bit,” Dan says. He pauses, kisses him on the cheekbone, because there’s still void pulling like tar at the edges and passageways of his brain, but Kath is rambling about the vexation of Marylou’s constant boasts about her fitness and there’s the smell of coffee in the air and it feels like the atmosphere is pressing back, keeping the worst at bay. “I’ve done half your mum’s puzzle book.”

Phil hums, wipes his glasses on his t-shirt to peer at the book. “I didn’t know you did Sudoku.”

“Nor did I,” he says. “I had to google the rules.”

“He’s very clever,” Kath interjects, and then, because Phil turns to look at her hopefully, “and no, Philip, there’s no cakes for breakfast.”

Phil sighs mournfully, tugs at the cuff of Dan’s hoodie, taken from the floor so long ago now. He blinks in the direction of Dan’s eyes, tilts an eyebrow.

“Yeah,” Dan says softly, the answer to the unspoken question, _is that mine?_ Phil searches his face, squinty and tired in his glasses, and Dan tips his chin up a little. He isn’t sure whether he’s avoiding eye contact or baring his throat. Maybe it’s both.

“There could be one cake for breakfast,” Phil says, pushing his chair out. His fingers trail a path along Dan’s back as he stands. “Considering it’s my birthday.”

“Or you could eat real food, considering you’re not ten,” Kath says, some middle ground between prim and indignant, and she frowns as he finds a box of cereal, eats a few pieces with his fingers, somehow smaller than her even as he towers over her. He brings it back to the table, sits closer to Dan then he needs to and chews in his ear.

“That one’s a nine,” he says, pointing, and he’s dreadfully wrong but Dan smiles a little anyway. Phil puts more cereal in his mouth, touches Dan’s hand, gentle pressure along his wrist until Dan lays the pen aside and curls their fingers together. Phil’s hand is cold and there’s cereal dust along his fingertips and the tiny squeeze means _hey_ and _good morning_ and _something’s wrong and I’m here_ and _I love you_ and _you’re okay_. Dan squeezes back, just a little, and then he picks up the pen. From across the room, Kath catches his eye, and Dan starts to relax muscles he hadn’t realized were tense. The darkness can come. Nothing bad can happen, not among family.

 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr [@cityofphanchester](http://www.cityofphanchester.tumblr.com) and reblog [here](http://cityofphanchester.tumblr.com/post/176796257890/even-while-the-dust-moves) <3


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